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” It’s probably more common to come home [from a conference] and feel a touch of despair in addition to all that inspiration…”

Martha Brockenbrough

Ain’t that the truth. As inspired and excited as I felt after last weekend’s workshop, I definitely also felt a touch of melancholy. I have called it the conference roller coaster. The highs come from connecting with like-minded peeps, getting good comments in critiques, feeling buoyed and hopeful and ready to take the next big steps. The lows come from overwhelm at all the talented people out there (how will I ever get noticed?), from the more critical comments (will I ever be publishable?) and from a sense of being a small fish in a big, competitive pond.

Last weekend the SCBWI Oregon chapter hosted a terrific 1-day workshop for writer-illustrators with Art Director Lauren Rille of Simon and Schuster. She was a great speaker and critique-er — her talk was highly entertaining (she cusses!), but packed with good information, and she pulled no punches when it came to critiquing our work. Her clear message was that the process of creating illustrations for a book is equal parts fun and difficult. It is a long, demanding process, and revisions and criticisms will probably continue long after everyone is ready to be done with this story and these characters. An illustrator must be prepared to revise and revise and revise, but the end result will raise the bar beyond what the illustrator thought he or she could do. A little daunting, but ultimately an inspiring perspective.

My favorite part of the day was the ‘intensive’ on character development. The key points Lauren emphasized were:

a) anatomy: even our tiniest readers are experts in looking at human bodies and faces, so even if we are creating exaggerated characters, they must be convincingly human (or anthropomorphic in the case of animal characters). Proportion, structure, and physical characteristics must be based in real anatomy even if the artist takes these elements beyond what real anatomy can do.

b) gesture: movement and body language tell so much story, sometimes very subtly. The illustrator’s challenge is to capture the gestures, subtle and extreme, that convey a character’s personality and energy.

c) emotion: characters’ emotions can be conveyed completely visually — the text may not include a word about it, but if the character shows emotion throughout his or her physical stance, facial expression, and attitude, the reader will totally get it. Pro tip: use those eyebrows!

Lauren had us do several exercises to try out these ideas. First we came up with a character:

After talking to us about gesture, she invited us to revisit that character and give him or her some energy through gesture:

In another exercise, she asked us to convey an emotion without showing the character’s face. We drew an emotion out of a hat —can you guess what mine was (answer below)? I found this pretty difficult, not sure how successful I was.

I was much happier with my results in the final exercise. Lauren had us draw 3 prompts from hats — physical attribute, action and emotion or attitude–combine them in one character and create a little narrative in 3 or 4 images. I wonder if you’ll guess what prompts I picked for this one?

I appreciated the nudge to draw something I never would have drawn on my own! The exercise really pushed me out of my own head space and freed me up to show my sense of humor. I cracked myself up while drawing these images, and I think the fun I had with it shows. Now I am hoping I can retain that silliness and energy when I refine these sketches and make a color set of playful nose-pickers for my portfolio.

This is the illustration I made for my son’s 5th birthday Space Party. Since it suits this week’s Illustration Friday theme, I thought I’d submit for a change. Not my usual style, but it made him very happy. The cake my mom made was an even bigger hit (see below)…

A little sketch of one of my favorite places. I fantasize about moving to Port Townsend one day. But Portland is also one of my favorite places, and many of my favorite people are here, so it’s hard to think of moving away.

…and when that’s all done, we hunker down with some soup in front of the fire, and stream the olympics on the laptop (because of course Portlandians don’t have televisions…). And tonight we will listen to the drip drop drip as it all melts away.

Kids in Portland know how to dress. Some PDX grown-ups cultivate creative get-ups too (hipster credibility requires fun socks, at a minimum), but usually it’s the kids who take the cake. The look is more hipster-ragbag than NY runway, but it’s a far cry from the fleece and flannels that dominated the landscape of my youth.